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It’s a nasty day to be long Wall Street’s “synchronized global recovery.” Chinese stocks are down -20% from their January highs. Emerging Market equities, like Argentina and the Philippines, have been rocked by the one-two punch of a stronger dollar and slowing growth. Italian equities are down -12% since early May. Our read on global stagflation remains firmly intact. In other words, it’s not the threat of President Trump’s trade wars that continue to weigh on global equity markets, it’s slowing economic data. We don’t expect these trends to reverse anytime soon. The evidence of global growth slowing is everywhere.

The latest news out of China is that the PBoC lowered the reserve requirements for some Chinese banks, thereby releasing $108 billion in liquidity. The media quickly blamed President Trump’s “trade wars” for the move. However, the economic tea leaves suggest China’s ongoing growth slowdown is the culprit. The ripple effects of #ChinaSlowing are already being felt in Emerging Asia, like Philippine equities. (China is one of the Philippines’ primary trading partners. #ChinaSlowing = Not good.) We continue to forecast #EuropeSlowing, despite ECB head Mario Draghi’s claim that European “growth momentum” is alive and well. If the data is so good, why did Eurozone Industrial Production get more-or-less cut in half in April (1.7% YoY i! from 3.2%)?

The Federal Reserve’s effort earlier this month to tamp down the rise of its benchmark interest rate already isn’t running as smoothly as officials might have anticipated. At its June 12-13 meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee hiked its target overnight funds rate 0.25 points to a range of 1.75 percent to 2 percent. At the same time, it raised the interest on excess reserves 0.2 points to 1.95 percent. The move was meant to contain the rise of the funds rate, which historically trails the IOER. In the weeks running up to the meeting, the funds rate closed within 5 basis points, or 0.05 percent, of the IOER, instead of staying within the midpoint of the target range as it has done since the Fed began hiking the funds rate in December 2015.

However, in the days since, the funds rate has moved even closer to the IOER. As of Friday trading, the funds rate has edged up to 1.92 percent — now just 3 basis points away from the IOER, though still 8 points away from the top of the trading range set at this month’s meeting. For the Fed, it’s a potential headache as the central bank sees to unwind the programs it initiated the pull the economy out of the financial crisis. The Fed kept interest rates at historically low levels and bought up nearly $4 trillion worth of Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities in an effort to keep rates anchored and maintain liquidity flow through the financial system. For investors, it means that continued upward pressure on the funds rate as the Fed unwinds the bonds on its balance sheet could keep the FOMC at bay in its stated intention to continue hiking interest rates.

“Here we are, and I think they will be lucky to get one more done this year, because whenever the curve flattens the market’s going to look at the Fed and say, ‘Really?’ and the Fed will have to blink,” said Christopher Whalen, head of Whalen Global Advisors, an investment bank consultancy. “They’re telling everyone there’s going to be a couple more rate increases, and that’s fanciful.”

Egon von Greyerz: “While the US government worries about the military threat of Russia, and the trade deficit with China, they show no concern for the real problems. To understand what is really happening, all we need to do is to ‘Follow the Money.’ The flows of real money reveal where global economic power is moving. “The US has not had a real budget surplus for almost 60 years and has run balance of payment deficits every year since 1975. A country that lives above its means for over half a century is technically and economically bankrupt. Its debt should have zero value and so should its currency. But the US has skillfully avoided bankruptcy, so far, by having the reserve currency of the world and being the biggest military power.

Both Russia and China can see the writing on the wall. They understand that the world’s most indebted country cannot solve its debt problem by issuing more debt. That is why Russia and China, together with India, are buying most of the global gold production every year. In May Russia added another 600,000 oz or almost 20 tonnes to its gold reserves. Since January 2018, when Trump became president, US debt has increased by 6% or $1.1 trillion to $21.1 trillion, while Russia has added another 9 million oz of gold, and are now holding $80 billion of gold reserves. So while the US economy is taking the road to perdition, Russia knows that the only money that will survive is gold — just like it always has! For years the world has financed the US debt by buying US treasuries. But we are now seeing a marked change.

Many countries are currently liquidating US Treasuries. They know what will happen to US debt and are trying to get rid of their holdings in an orderly manner in order to avoid US Treasuries crashing together with the dollar. This is what will happen at some point in the next 1-3 years. Global investors will panic out of dollar denominated bonds, leading to a crash of both the US currency and dollar debt. The Chinese know this but their US Treasury holdings are so large that they need to sell slowly in order not to shoot themselves in the foot. In the end, China is likely to take a major loss on its dollar Treasury holdings but that is the price they have been willing to pay in order to build up their economy and manufacturing sector through financing US deficit spending.

From global manufacturers such as Harley-Davidson to small tech startups, companies are scrambling to rework supply chains built for an era of stable, open trade policy that is now under threat. As U.S. President Donald Trump pushes to upend the status quo of global trade, companies that initially took a wait-and-see stance are starting to take action to shield their businesses from shifting trade policy. On Monday, U.S. motorcycle maker Harley warned of higher costs because of retaliatory EU tariffs, and said it would shift production of bikes destined for the European Union out of the United States to factories it has built in India, Brazil and Thailand.

The decision of the Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based company, which Trump vowed to make great again when he took office, came less than a week after Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler cut its 2018 profit forecast, citing growing trade tensions. Its German rival BMW said it was considering “possible strategic options” in view of the rising trade tensions between China and the United States. Harley is the latest example of how companies are finding themselves in the crosshairs following “tit-for-tat” retaliations over Trump’s bid to rewrite global trade rules as part of his “America First” agenda. Office furniture maker Steelcase last week reported a 230 basis-point fall in the gross margins of its American business in the first quarter due to higher raw materials costs following Trump’s metal import tariffs.

Conflicting signals from the Trump administration over proposed restrictions on foreign investment in U.S. technology companies, along with news that recently imposed import tariffs are starting to disrupt supply chains, sent global stock markets tumbling on Monday. Proposed restrictions on foreign investment in U.S. technology would not just be confined to China, according to U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The forthcoming restrictions would apply “to all countries that are trying to steal our technology,” he said. The U.S. Treasury is due to issue its recommendations on Chinese investment restrictions on Friday.

Late Monday White House trade and manufacturing adviser Peter Navarro sought to downplay Mnuchin’s remarks, telling CNBC television that the restrictions on investments in U.S. technology companies would just target China. Benchmark Wall Street stock indexes suffered their worst losses in two months on Monday, while safe haven Treasury debt yields fell. U.S. technology stocks were worst hit. Alphabet, the parent of Google, fell 2.6 percent, Apple lost 2.75 percent, and Amazon dropped 3.0 percent. The recent imposition of import tariffs by the U.S., and counter-measures by other countries, are also starting to affect global production and supply chains. Some U.S. steel and aluminium tariffs went into effect in April and additional tariffs begin in July.

Trump, Escobar explains, wasn’t born into the Manhattan aristocracy. And though the “Masters of the Universe” – a group that includes the country’s top bankers along with the leaders of the military and intelligence communities – were initially reluctant to embrace him (as were many factions within the Republican Party), they eventually changed their minds once they understood that he would advocate for their interests. “He’s not born in lower Manhattan…and he’s not part of the New York aristocracy, the establishment that’s been there for some 150 to 200 years…he’s still regarded in New York as a wealthy outsider. But in the end, he was accepted by some sectors of the Republican Party – even though they initially didn’t want to accept him – Washington, some sectors of the Republican Party.”

He was the candidate of the establishment from the beginning, or he was a genuine candidate whose regime has now been disturbed by the Deep State. He was vetoed by the establishment – this is something that people who know how the Deep State works in DC they will tell you always the same thing: You don’t become a candidate for a President of the United States if you are not vetted…by the people who actually run the US.” Trump was vulnerable to this manipulation because he doesn’t have a nuanced enough understanding of geopolitics…which has forced him to rely on advisors whispering in his ear…advisors whose intentions aren’t always working in the best interest of the president, or the American people, for that matter.

One example is Trump’s insistence on instigating a trade war between China and the US. While China has many ways to retaliate against the US, as least when it comes to finding markets for their goods, US companies have more options than their Chinese peers. “Trump still doesn’t understand that the retaliation is going to be really huge from the Chinese and they have ways of hurting badly – they even have ways of ratcheting up taxes on products made in the Midwest. But they’re going to lose much more than we do. We have other markets. We export more to Asia, we export more to South America and we export more to Europe.”

Melvyn Bragg has said Britain is becoming a stupid country, in part because its university system is being destroyed. The broadcaster and Labour peer criticised the state of British higher education in an interview with the magazine Radio Times. “We have, per capita, the best university system in the world, but it’s being – carelessly and utterly stupidly – destroyed very slowly,” he said. “We used to be the clever country and now we’re clearly the stupid country. Except for certain highlights.”

The car industry has warned Theresa May there is “no Brexit dividend” for the business, with 860,000 jobs being put at risk unless the government “rethinks” its red lines in negotiations. In the starkest warning yet from a single business sector, the car lobby has told the government that it needs “as a minimum” to remain in the customs union and a deal that delivers “single market benefits”. “There is no Brexit dividend for our industry,” Michael Hawes, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, said. It said Brexit uncertainty was thwarting investment and repeated calls for the UK to stay in the customs partnership until the government came up with a “credible plan B”.

With investment slowing and time running out, negotiators must get on with the job of agreeing a deal that will put an end to uncertainty and prioritise the needs of the automotive sector, the SMMT said. The sector had grown for the eighth successive year with turnover at a record £82bn in 2017. However it said 2018 has showed a slowdown in output with investment earmarked for new models, equipments and facilities in the UK halving to around £347m. [..] “With decisions on new vehicle models in the UK due soon, government must take steps to boost investor confidence and safeguard the thousands of jobs that depend on the sector,” it said ahead of a key conference for the automotive industry.

The government had “no credible Plan B” for customs arrangements post-Brexit, it said, that would keep the Port of Dover flowing freely. Car manufacturers rely on what is known as “just in time” production whereby components, mostly from the EU, cross the channel just hours before they are needed on the assembly line. More than 1,000 trucks a day cross the channel with these components.

Bears and bulls alike following Tesla’s gripping nailbiter of a story – the company has until the end of the month to pumpt out 5,000 Model 3 sedans a week – both agree on one thing: the output of the company’s new “tent” structure which Musk erected recently to produce Model 3 vehicles is going to decide whether or not the company hits its production goal that it has touted over the last couple of months. The tent was erected in just a matter of weeks, and came online in early June, to help the company produce more vehicles at a time when they are under the microscope. Until recently, we didn’t know the details as to when it was erected, what the timing looked like and what it is expected to produce.

However, a Bloomberg article out today helped shed some light on the details of what is arguably the most important – if archaic – structure that Tesla has built yet. Not surprisingly, opinions extend the whole gamut, with some manufacturing experts claiming the tent is “basically nuts”: “Elon Musk has six days to make good on his pledge that Tesla will be pumping out 5,000 Model 3 sedans a week by the end of the month. If he succeeds, it may be thanks to the curious structure outside the company’s factory. It’s a tent the size of two football fields that Musk calls “pretty sweet” and that manufacturing experts deride as, basically, nuts. [..] Inside the tent in Fremont, California, is an assembly line Musk hastily pulled together for the Model 3. That’s the electric car that is supposed to vault Tesla from niche player for the wealthy to high-volume automaker, bringing a more affordable electric vehicle to the masses.”

Analysts at Bernstein are equally unimpressed. Here is a quote from Max Warburton who benchmarked auto assembly plants before his job as a financial analyst: “Words fail me. It’s insanity,” said Max Warburton, who benchmarked auto-assembly plants around the world before becoming a financial analyst. [..] What gives manufacturing experts pause about Tesla’s tent is that it was pitched to shelter an assembly line cobbled together with scraps lying around the brick-and-mortar plant. It smacks of a Hail Mary move after months of stopping and starting production to make on-the-fly fixes to automated equipment, which Musk himself has said was a mistake. “The existing line isn’t functional, it can’t build cars as planned and there isn’t room to get people into work stations to replace the non-functioning robots,” Warburton said. “So here we have it—build cars manually in the parking lot.”

A Russian company accused of helping fund a propaganda operation to sway the 2016 presidential election in Donald Trump’s favor asked a federal judge on Monday to dismiss charges brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, saying Mueller was unlawfully appointed and lacks prosecutorial authority. Concord Management and Consulting LLC, a firm that prosecutors say is controlled by a businessman dubbed by Russian media as “Putin’s cook,” argued in a filing in U.S. district court in Washington that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein violated the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution when he hired Mueller in May 2017.

Concord is one of three entities, along with 13 Russian individuals, indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office in February in an alleged criminal and espionage conspiracy to tamper with the U.S. race, boost Trump and disparage his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. The indictment said Concord is controlled by Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin, who U.S. officials have said has extensive ties to Russia’s military and political establishment. In it, Concord is alleged to have controlled funding, recommended personnel and overseen the activities of the propaganda campaign. Concord is the only one of the defendants in the case to have formally responded to the charges in federal court. Earlier this year, it hired American lawyers to fight the indictment.

Under the Constitution’s Appointments Clause, principal officers such as cabinet secretaries are appointed by the president and confirmed by the United States Senate while “inferior officers” may be appointed by courts or department heads if permitted by Congress. Concord’s lawyers say that Mueller qualifies as an “officer” under the clause and not a routine federal employee under the law because of his vast prosecutorial authority. They say that no matter whether Mueller is deemed an “inferior” or “principal” officer, his appointment still violates the Constitution. As a principal officer, they say, he should have been appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

One of the more devastating intelligence leaks in American history — the unmasking of the CIA’s arsenal of cyber warfare weapons last year — has an untold prelude worthy of a spy novel. Some of the characters are household names, thanks to the Russia scandal: James Comey, fired FBI director. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Department of Justice (DOJ) official Bruce Ohr. Julian Assange, grand master of WikiLeaks. And American attorney Adam Waldman, who has a Forrest Gump-like penchant for showing up in major cases of intrigue. Each played a role in the early days of the Trump administration to try to get Assange to agree to “risk mitigation” — essentially, limiting some classified CIA information he might release in the future.

The effort resulted in the drafting of a limited immunity deal that might have temporarily freed the WikiLeaks founder from a London embassy where he has been exiled for years, according to interviews and a trove of internal DOJ documents turned over to Senate investigators. But an unexpected intervention by Comey — relayed through Warner — soured the negotiations, multiple sources tell me. Assange eventually unleashed a series of leaks that U.S. officials say damaged their cyber warfare capabilities for a long time to come. This yarn begins in January 2017 when Assange’s legal team approached Waldman — known for his government connections — to see if the new Trump administration would negotiate with the WikiLeaks founder, holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy.

[..] Ohr consulted his chain of command and the intelligence community about what appeared to be an extraordinary overture that raised hopes the government could negotiate what Assange would release and what he might redact, to protect the names of exposed U.S. officials. Assange made clear through the lawyer that he would never compromise his sources, or stop publishing information, but was willing to consider concessions like redactions. Although the intelligence community reviled Assange for the damage his past releases caused, officials “understood any visibility into his thinking, any opportunity to negotiate any redactions, was in the national security interest and worth taking,” says a senior official involved at the time.

Assamaka, Niger — From this isolated frontier post deep in the sands of the Sahara, the expelled migrants can be seen coming over the horizon by the hundreds. They look like specks in the distance, trudging miserably across some of the world’s most unforgiving terrain in the blistering sun. They are the ones who made it out alive. Here in the desert, Algeria has abandoned more than 13,000 people in the past 14 months, including pregnant women and children, stranding them without food or water and forcing them to walk, sometimes at gunpoint, under temperatures of up to 48ºC (118ºF). In Niger, where the majority head, the lucky ones limp across a desolate 15-kilometer (9-mile) no man’s land to Assamaka, less a town than a collection of unsteady buildings sinking into drifts of sand.

Others, disoriented and dehydrated, wander for days before a U.N. rescue squad can find them. Untold numbers perish along the way; nearly all the more than two dozen survivors interviewed by The Associated Press told of people in their groups who simply could not go on and vanished into the Sahara. [..] Algeria’s mass expulsions have picked up since October 2017, as the European Union renewed pressure on North African countries to head off migrants going north to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea or the barrier fences with Spain. These migrants from across sub-Saharan Africa — Mali, the Gambia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Niger and more — are part of the mass migration toward Europe, some fleeing violence, others just hoping to make a living.

A European Union spokesperson said the EU was aware of what Algeria was doing, but that “sovereign countries” can expel migrants as long as they comply with international law. Unlike Niger, Algeria takes none of the EU money intended to help with the migration crisis, although it did receive $111.3 million in aid from Europe between 2014 and 2017. Algeria provides no figures for the expulsions. But the number of people crossing on foot to Niger has been rising steadily since the International Organization for Migration started counting in May 2017, when 135 people were dropped at the crossing, to as high as 2,888 in April 2018. In all, according to the IOM, a total of 11,276 men, women and children survived the march.

A Brazilian Congress commission has approved a controversial bill to lift restrictions on pesticides despite fierce opposition from environmentalists, prosecutors, health and environment ministry bodies, and even United Nations special rapporteurs. Driven by a powerful agribusiness lobby, the bill now needs to be voted on in both houses of Congress and sanctioned by President Michel Temer before becoming law. Its proponents say it will free up bureaucracy and modernise dated legislation. But the bill has generated fierce opposition in Brazil, one of the world’s biggest food producers and biggest consumers of pesticides, even those banned in other countries.

Opponents dubbed it the “poison package” and said it would lead to the indiscriminate use of dangerous pesticides, while 250,000 signed an online petition against it. “The law will make us more permissive than we already are,” said Larissa Bombardi, a professor of geography and pesticides specialist at the University of São Paulo. “The economic interest will prevail over human and environmental health.” Of 121 pesticides permitted in Brazil for coffee production, 30 are already banned in the European Union, including the toxic herbicide paraquat, Bombardi reported in an extensive 2017 study. The bill overhauls existing legislation, allowing for pesticides to be given temporary register if the approval process has taken over two years and three countries in the OECD have already approved it.

[..] Under Brazil’s current legislation, pesticides with elements considered teratogenic, carcinogenic, mutagenic, endocrine disruptive, or posing risks to the reproductive system can’t be registered, they said. But under the bill, hazardous pesticides will only be prohibited when there is a “scientifically established unacceptable risk” – a definition too vague to be effective. Greenpeace attacked lawmakers for approving the bill in the face of such wide opposition. “They want a toxic product to look less threatening,” said Marcio Astrini, Greenpeace Brazil’s public policy coordinator. “The toxic garbage being banned in the rest of the planet will be sold here.”

David Lynch on Trump: “He could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history because he has disrupted the thing so much. No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way.” While Trump may not be doing a good job himself, Lynch thinks, he is opening up a space where other outsiders might. “Our so-called leaders can’t take the country forward, can’t get anything done. Like children, they are. Trump has shown all this.”

Anybody got anything on the misdirection? While we’re covering meaningless tweets and endless false stories, two exceptionally dangerous actions went through. First, the creation (more like admission) that we have a military space force. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that violates (another) international treaty on the arms race. Second, signing off on (or admitting to) new low-yield nukes, which were outlawed under existing treaties because it wildly lowers the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield.

I’d call these much more serious, and provable, than most of the nonsense we’re hearing. But it’s pro-war, so it’s got to be good right? Buy buy buy.

I can’tsee how China ever needs to fail financially. If the rest of the world fell off China has so many people of its own to buy and sell to each other and the land to grow things so why should it fail? That really applies to every country. The emphasis on exporting is the latest fad when we should, in my view, concentrate on our own and just export any surplus.

Yeah. The all important timing consideration with metals…which trade over very long time cycles And usually central banks buying gold is very contrarian. It is something that can and has been confiscated, it has been used as a monetary standard before and eventually failed and it cannot be used directly to purchase everyday necessities of living. There has been a big uptick recently in gold infomericals.